The Christchurch Innovations project is at the intersection of two of the Government's four priorities:

Delivering better public services within tight financial constraints

Rebuilding Christchurch.

Demonstrating Better Public Services (BPS), the Christchurch Innovations project promotes innovative design and delivery of public services arising from the earthquake response, through the following series of case studies and accompanying video clips.

In each of these cases, a "do whatever it takes" attitude resulted in a seismic shift in thinking and service delivery by government and non-government agencies working together to restore services or provide assistance to the people of Canterbury. There is an opportunity to capture learnings from Greater Christchurch and apply these innovations more widely across the public sector, for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

With the increased focus on results, it is hoped that Christchurch Innovations will inspire other agencies to adopt or adapt some of the new ways of working, encouraging the move from innovation by necessity to innovation by design.

Case Studies

As part of a wider project to analyse public sector innovations occurring after the Canterbury earthquakes, the State Services Commission (SSC) conducted a case study of two organisations considered instrumental to those innovations, Inland Revenue (IR) and the Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) - lessons for other agencies - to inform future work to encourage innovation in the public sector (*)